Here below is the revised text for issue 25 discussed with Justin and others in the group with some modifications to take Justin's comments into account.
Information may be collected to create statistical measures of the reach in relation to the total population, and frequency of exposure of the content to the online audience, including paid components of web pages. One such method is through using a panel of users who have affirmatively agreed to have their media consumption and web surfing behavior measured across sites.
The panel output is calibrated by counting actual hits on tagged content and re-adjusting the results in order to ensure data produced from the panel accurately represents the whole audience. The counts must be pseudonomised. Counts are retained for sample, quality control, and auditing purposes during which time contractual measures must be in place to limit access to, and protect the data from other uses. A 53 week retention period is necessary so that month over month reports for a one year period may be re-run for quality checking purposes, after which the data must be de-identified. The counted data is largely collected on a first party basis, but to ensure complete representation, some will be third party placement. This collection tracks the content rather than involving the collection of a user's browser history.
The purposes must be limited to:
facilitating online media valuation, planning and buying via accurate and reliable audience measurement.
optimizing content and placement on an individual site.
Audience measurement data must be reported as aggregated information such that no recipient is able to build commercial profiles about particular individuals or devices.
To clarify a comment from Justin about auditing, note that audience measurement systems (whether TV, radio, print or online) are usually managed or monitored by an independent body as
guarantee of accuracy with various stakeholders in a joint industry body defining what is needed to provide a robust and impartial system.
MRC handles this in the US whilst the JICWEBs reporting standards of ABC handles this in the UK and AGMA is the German audit body. Here is
a longer list http://www.i-jic.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=55143f172846ed39c7958cbeb837a85a
and here is ABC http://www.abc.org.uk/PageFiles/50/Web%20Traffic%20Audit%20Rules%20and%20Guidance%20Notes%20version2%20March%202013%20master.pdf
Regards
Kathy Joe
ESOMAR